One Final Training Montage
by polynya
Summary: Renji and Rukia are really, really close to bankai. They just have one thing left to do... talk about their feelings.


**Author's Note: **This is actually the first RenRuki fanfiction I wrote. I am probably going to completely re-write it again some day, since is has been slowly and steadily losing continuity with my other stories, but people seem to like it, so I'm gonna leave it the way it is for now.

Anyway, the 1000 Year Blood War arc was so, so long and so, so boring, but I honestly could have read at least another fifty chapters about the gang bumming around the Royal Realm. So here's a story about that.

* * *

**One Final Training Montage**

* * *

"Rukia! Come in!"

Rukia passed a pale-faced, stricken Renji in the narrow hallway leading to Ichibe's office. "Was it bad?" she mouthed.

"I haven't decided yet," he replied.

Rukia swallowed.

"Hello!" Ichibe bellowed cheerfully as she settled herself on the other side of his desk. Sode no Shirayuki, in the form of a small white fox, hopped up onto the desk, tucking her tail around herself elegantly. "Hello, beautiful." Sode no Shirayuki regarded him with a pleased look in her shiny black eyes, and gave a little nod. "We're working on bankai, right?" He featured toward the fox. "This is a good sign."

"I don't actually think I'm very close. I was actually just appointed Vice-Captain very recently and-"

"I'm going to cut you off there," he said, leaning forward. "You're close. Nearly there, actually. Sometimes these things happen all at once. You've gone about your powers in a pretty roundabout way, you know."

"I have?"

"Rukia, what kind of zanpakutou is Sode no Shirayuki?"

Rukia blinked. "Ice and snow."

Ichibe held up a finger emphatically. "Wrong."

"Wrong?"

Sode no Shirayuki nodded crisply.

"Wrong?" Rukia repeated, her voice going a little shrill. "She's got 'snow' right in her name!"

"It's true, and someone with a water-type zanpakutou helped you to wring some perfectly serviceable ice attacks out of her, which is frankly, pretty impressive." Ichibe leaned forward. "But she's actually… a cold zanpakutou."

Rukia frowned. "What's the difference?"

"There are zanpakutou that generate physical attacks, like your brother's, and then there are those, like Kurosaki's, that make him faster and stronger. Yours makes you cold. Very cold. You could use that to make ice and snow, of course, but it would also make you immune to a number of kido attacks, absorb your opponents' reiatsu, all sorts of interesting things. Have you ever tried to use your powers that way?"

"Well...no. I've never really…" No, not exactly never, was it? "I have gotten really cold a few times, but it wasn't in battle. The first time was before I had properly met Sode no Shirayuki. Brother said it was a side effect of having an ice zanpakutou. Hitsugaya-taichou said the same thing had happened to him."

"Hitsugaya-taichou had a dream about a sledding and woke up with icicles on his nose, I'd wager," Ichibe mused. "But you did it wide awake, didn't you? To escape a bad feeling, didn't you?"

Ice pooled in the pit of Rukia's stomach. This was not something she preferred to think about. Maybe she was about to do it again. She gave a tiny nod.

"That's another benefit! It's hard to feel emotions when you're technically dead!"

Rukia frowned thoughtfully. "So… I need to practice getting cold. That I'll need to get down to some low temperature before I can release?"

"Yes! Exactly!

"And then what, you'll throw some kido at me?"

"Mmm, there's an easier way. The colder you get, as I said, the less you should be affected by your own emotions. You should try to confront some difficult emotions, and if you can maintain cold in the face of them, you'll have succeeded."

"That does not sound easier."

"It will be very good for you, and also for your friend. Let's go!"

"My friend? What?"

* * *

"We don't see why you're mad at us," Zabimaru said with their snake mouth, while their monkey mouth gnawed at an itchy spot. "You were perfectly happy with the bankai we gave you before you knew we had another one."

Renji stretched his back until it popped satisfyingly. His brain felt tired, although his body didn't. Time didn't seem to have much meaning in the Royal Realm. He couldn't really remember the last time he had slept and he knew hadn't eaten since Hikifune's. He'd been training all day. Had it just been a day? He definitely had no idea how long he and Rukia had glared murderous intent at each other in the courtyard. It had been exhausting at the time, but once again, his body seemed to be generating reiatsu like a dynamo; he was practically vibrating. Was this what it felt like to be Ichigo?

"Well, maybe I would forgive you if you would just let me use the new one. I know its name."

"That awful man had no business telling you that. And what have you done to deserve it?"

Renji sighed heavily. "It doesn't matter if I deserve it. I _need _it. My friends are dying. Soul Society is going to be destroyed."

The monkey head looked up. "Your friends! Your friends don't deserve our bankai either! Tch! You give everything you have to every person you meet and you're happy with the smallest scraps of affection they drop for you in return! Why should you expect any more from us?"

Renji squatted down next to his reclining zanpakutou spirit. "Look. I'm a hot mess. I think we both know that. I'm a scumbag who knows how to throw a good sucker punch and who can take hits long enough for my friends to run away. You picked me or… however that happens. You knew what you were getting."

Zabimaru narrowed their yellow eyes. "You have this idea that the ideal shinigami knows how to write a haiku and keep his shihakusho spotless. You used your power to claw your way out of the mud and shit of Inuzuri. You wake in the morning and train yourself until you fall into bed, exhausted at night. Oetsu's trial in the pit of asauchi could not have been a more perfect test for you, and you passed it, absolutely. We cannot think of one in Soul Society more deserving of the title 'shinigami' than you."

"Great! Why can't I have it again?"

"Because this is not the bankai of a mere shinigami. This is the bankai of a captain. Can you see yourself in a white haori? Can you accept yourself as a hero, not just the hero's friend? It seems to us that you cannot."

Renji sucked his teeth thoughtfully for a moment. "So what you're saying is... that I need to beat Kuchiki-taichou-?"

"We are absolutely not saying that."

The door to Ichibe's office swished open.

Zabimaru's heads tilted slightly in unison. "Rukia is coming. You consider her your best friend, don't you? Ask her for what you need from her. If she gives it to you, we will give you what you need from us. "

Renji frowned suspiciously. "You've never liked Rukia."

"We have always liked Rukia! She is like us: fierce and unlucky, especially for her friends. That is not always so good for you, though, and you are the one we have bound ourselves to."

Footsteps were coming down the hall now. "Also, what does that mean? What do I need from her?" Renji's voice dropped to a desperate whisper.

"Perhaps some of her ferocity," the snakehead hissed.

Ichibe strode into the dojo, Rukia close at his heels, and Sode no Shirayuki trotting behind. Zabimaru had never been particularly shy about manifesting in front of other people (they had been particularly fond of Sado), but most zanpakutou were. Renji had never seen Sode no Shirayuki before, but her reiatsu was unmistakable; she felt like Rukia on the warpath.

The little fox trotted up to Zabimaru. They sniffed noses, briefly, then Sode no Shirayuki hopped up onto the nue's back and curled up into a ball, their fur nearly the same color. Zabimaru settled down with their monkey face on their paws, facing away from Renji.

Renji threw up his hands. This place was so normal. Just so, so normal.

"SO!" Ichibe boomed. "Do we all know what we're doing?"

"No," Renji and Rukia replied in unison.

"Ah! Well! Do you know why I had you two train your killing intent on each other earlier?"

"No," Rukia and Renji repeated in unison.

"It was partially to get used to the air up here," he admitted, "But it was also for me. My curiosity, I mean. As you may know, powerful shinigami often come along in pairs."

"They do?"

"Don't they teach you anything down there? Yes, they do. And in some ways, the explanation is very mundane. You have a friend who supports you, you work together, you train together, you become strong together."

"Like Captains Ukitake and Kyouraku," Rukia suggested.

"And excellent example! But it is more than just friendship. Perhaps you may become friends with someone because there is some aspect of their soul that aligns with your own. Or perhaps as you spend time with them, your souls become more alike, and your reiatsu attunes to one other." He leaned forward. "Have you read any of the old tales? Before the Gotei 13? Of Shirahama and Umanoahigata, for example?"

"Who tied their souls together? And they could enter each other's inner worlds and share reiatsu and stuff?" Renji asked, somewhat skeptical.

Rukia shot him a mildly horrified look.

"It's one of the great romantic epics, Rukia," he frowned, crossing arms over his chest. "What? I _read_. Anyway, they weren't real."

"They most certainly were," Ichibe corrected him. "I knew them. In any case, I have never liked the term 'killing intent.' It's not one of mine, and it's inaccurate, but I know it's the term you use. We are spirits and we live in a place composed of spirit energy. When we focus our killing intent on another, what we are truly doing is asserting our own existence, potentially at the expense of everyone and everything around us. Normally, when two people focus their will on one another, they will call forth their reiatsu, often to the detriment of nearby architecture and bystanders. One can only maintain this for a limited amount of time, which is usually fine, because it's also incredibly hard to resist running at the other person and trying to chop them in half. But! When two people are so close that their souls have started to intertwine, something different happens. Your will to exist strengthens theirs. You can enter an incredibly powerful state and are capable of amazing feats."

Renji exchanged a skeptical glance with Rukia. "So, uh, which did we do?"

"What you did is something I have never seen before in my life! It was very strange and I was quite surprised!"

Why is that so many peoples' reaction to meeting us? Rukia mused.

"It's been centuries since I've seen two souls with such good harmonics," Ichibe went on. "But you couldn't connect to one another at all. I mean, from my perspective, you stared each other in the face and screamed at each other while your reiatsu went bonkers. For three hours. That's a long time, by the way. To be screaming." He stroked his beard thoughtfully. "What was it like for you two?"

Their eyes went wide. Their tongues went thick. Silence pounded in their ears.

Ichibe's hand went still.

"It was...fine?" Renji offered weakly.

"It was weird as hell, dummy!" Rukia corrected, hitting him on the chest with the back of her hand. "Renji's reiatsu is as familiar as my own, it's never bothered me before, but the distortion was so strong, I had trouble keeping my eyes focused on him." _Squinting through sheets of pulsing blue and red energy, trying to focus on his eyes. He seemed to be flickering in and out of reality, and possibly changing height. Where was all this reiatsu coming from, anyway? They weren't even using their zanpakutou. _

"I know I was focusing," Renji said slowly, "but it was like being in a thunderstorm. And I kept...remembering things?" _Rukia was small, a girl. Covered in blood, screaming. _

Rukia nodded quickly in agreement. "Except that some of those memories weren't actually... mine?" _Her body pierced through by the thousand blades of Sebonzakura Kageyoshi, screaming her killing intent at her brother as he walked away towards the execution grounds. _

Renji tugged at his bandana. "Or maybe never happened at all." _Rukia, her face made pale and feral by the tattoos on her forehead, standing over a bloodied Ichigo on a rainy, dismal Karakura night. _

"Or maybe just not yet." _Renji, his hair cut short and streaked with white, his captain's haori shredded and soaked with muddy water. _To be honest, it's not easy to remember now," Rukia explained. "Like trying to hold a minnow in your hand."

"And it was three hours? It somehow felt much shorter than that. But also longer?"

The looked at each other hopelessly.

"I wish I had years to study you two ducklings," Ichibe sighed fondly. "But Yhwach will probably be up to kill us any time now, so you really need to get this sorted out. Here's what I think: you've got some kind of interpersonal problem holding you back."

"What?"

"Say again?"

"A breach of trust, maybe? An old wound that's never healed? A long hidden secret? It's probably related to whatever intrapersonal problem Renji's having with his zanpakutou, and Rukia needs some practice working through some difficult emotions, so it seems worthwhile to just hammer it out." He clapped his hands together cheerfully, and glanced up at one horrified face and then down at the other one. "You...probably don't actually want me here for this. Tell you what! I'll go make some tea, and by the time you're done, we'll all have a cup together!"

For the second time in their lives, Rukia and Renji were left standing alone in a sunlit dojo, with the weight of their precious, turbulent, undefinable relationship hanging in the air.

This fact was lost on neither of them. For Rukia, it was the sound of retreating footsteps and the faraway swish of a door that plunged her heart into unwanted nostalgia. For Renji, it was the harsh pull of air filling his lungs as Ichibe's reiatsu lifted suddenly from the room.

For a moment, they stood frozen, side-by-side, muscles painfully stiff, staring straight ahead.

Renji clamped down to the idiotic impulse to blurt out "Pretty heavy atmosphere in here, huh?" and then the even more idiotic impulse to giggle. There was the rasp of steel against leather, and Renji's eyes swiveled painfully downward to see that Rukia had drawn her sword.

"Renji," she said in a very quiet and serious voice that he knew well. It was a voice for hunting rabbits without letting the rabbits know what you were doing. "Ichibe said that in order to achieve bankai, I must become comfortable with lowering my own body temperature. In the past, I have only done this reflexively, in order to escape unpleasant emotions. I am going to release my sword now, because, to be honest, I am experiencing some unpleasant emotions already."

"Okay," Renji said softly. He focused on her sword as she swung through the graceful motions of release, the nearly translucent white of its blade, the trailing afterimage of its ribbon. It was the perfect sword for her, he had always thought so. It appeared utterly out of place in the brutality of battle, but could dispatch an enemy with cold and merciless efficiency. As the blade completed its revolution, the air took on a momentary chill, and then the temperature abruptly plummeted. Rukia took a deep, centering breath. "Did it help?" Renji asked, rubbing his arms where goosebumps had just appeared.

"Of course it did," she replied, turning toward him. "I just had a bad moment, there. Our relationship isn't perfect, of course it isn't. So, we have to face something a little ugly that maybe we've been avoiding. We're not children anymore, Renji, we can work this out."

"Work what out?" he asked glumly, not turning to meet her gaze. "I thought we were fine. Then again, I thought everything was fine."

She frowned thoughtfully. "Maybe let's start with something easy. What's up with Zabimaru?"

Renji glanced over to the corner of the dojo where their zanpakutou spirits had been, but they had disappeared. "Hmm? Oh, well, remember my bankai?"

"'Remember'? What do you mean 'remember'?" Rukia demanded, raising an eyebrow.

"Apparently, that's… only half my bankai? I have a real bankai, that's better, but Zabimaru says I don't deserve it."

"Oh." Rukia contemplated how a skeletal snake the size of a city block could be half of anything. "That seems good, actually."

"Is does?"

"A more powerful bankai? Of course that's good. And Zabimaru always gives you a hard time, you just need to figure what they want this time." Rukia cocked her head thoughtfully. "Do you think they want you to defeat my brother?"

"No, I asked, and that's definitely not it." Renji stared up at the ceiling as Rukia pondered other possibilities. "Actually, uh, I think Ichibe is right. It has to do with our problem. Mine and yours, I mean."

"Oh. That's… odd. I thought bankai was between shinigami and zanpakutou, what do I have to do with it?"

Renji winced. "You're… very important to me." I can't get my head on straight because I'm always tied in knots over you, he did not add.

"You don't need to be afraid to hurt my feelings, you know," she prodded.

"I don't want to think about feelings right now," Renji snarled, a bit too harshly, "I want to go fight Quincy."

"You know, Renji," she said loftily, tapping her finger against the hilt of her sword. "I have always admired how hard to you train yourself, and how good you are at training young shinigami. But you have one weakness, and it's that you hate digging into your own weaknesses."

"Hey, my kidou has really improved in the last year, and you know it!"

"I do know it! I also know you spent decades pretending it wasn't an issue and overcompensating instead. You got a perfect score on _every other _component of the lieutenant's exams because you knew you would bomb kido."

"How did you know that?" he demanded.

"I know everything," she replied snottily. And I spend a lot of time with Nanao, she thought, who scores the exams, and is both lonely and a gossip.

"Fine. What of it?"

"So, I'm a weak spot. Deal with it."

"You're not- I can't just-"

"What are you afraid of? We've been through so much together, do you think there's literally anything you could say that would ruin our friendship? After the worst 40 years imaginable, do you think I would ever let you go again?"

His stomach twisted. Slowly, carefully, Renji drew his zanpakutou, and with a snap of his wrist, silently released into shikai. Good to know that still works, he thought bitterly. The flare of his own reiatsu insulated him against Rukia's cold, somewhat, and his head cleared a little. "Maybe you're right. Maybe we don't spend enough time staring each other in the face and pointing our swords at each other's heart." He turned, easing into a two-handed fighting stance.

Her face was pale and serious, her lips a firm line. "Go ahead," she said, in a voice like cold steel. "Let me have it."

"Let you have it?" he echoed. "You think you've done something wrong? You think I'm mad at you?"

"Maybe? You probably should be." She thought back to where their thoughts had both initially gravitated. "This is about me leaving, isn't it? It's always been about me leaving."

"Maybe it is," Renji said softly, a tinge of anger in voice, "but I have never, for a single moment, been mad at you about that. I have been mad at every single person and thing in Soul Society about that, but not you." He shook his head. "I never wanted to tell you this, because I knew you would take it on yourself, but I was really messed up for a long time after that. I pushed my friends away, I drank too much, I fought anyone who would fight me." He scowled. "It really says something that the best decision I made around that time was to throw myself into a pit of similar idiots who enjoyed getting their arms broken."

The temperature steadily decreased. Frost was beginning to form on the floor in the arc where their reiatsu intersected. "Renji," she said slowly. "Did you think...I didn't know?"

Renji's breath caught in his throat.

"Did you think I somehow didn't hear that you had transferred? Or did you think that I said to myself, ah, my dear friend Renji has transferred to the brute squad! My friend Renji, who I know better than he knows himself, who is hard-working and smart and very, very kind, but who sometimes gets these feelings of worthlessness where he thinks his big stupid fists and thick skull are somehow the only good part of him, has transferred to the squad that cares about big stupid fists and thick skulls! How wonderful!" She looked off to the side for a long moment, then turned back and looked into his eyes.

Rukia paused to do a quick physiological inventory. Surely, she wasn't saying all this calmly and rationally, rather than in thick, heaving sobs? Her tear ducts seemed pretty well frozen. Her heartbeat had slowed to the occasional lazy lub dub. Her lungs drew no air. Her brain still seemed to be humming along at its usual pace. She was becoming more aware of her own reishi, cold and deep, and getting colder, but she wasn't ready for that yet. They were getting somewhere, though. Renji's face looked pinched and pale; it wasn't very fair that he had to go through this without any armor against his own emotions.

His nostrils flared. "The one thing I never expected," he bit off slowly, "was that they would leave you alone. They had adopted you, surely they would love you and surround you with new family and friends and people who had recognized what a mistake it was that you ever ended up in Rukongai. Because I know how you are when you're alone."

"How am I?" she challenged.

"You withdraw, you push everything down, you convince yourself that no one ever loved you or needed you and you certainly didn't love or need them. You did it when our friends died. You need someone to pull you out, you can't do it by yourself." His face twisted painfully. "I didn't know they had left you alone until later. Even if I had known, it's not like… there wasn't anything… I couldn't have… I had already thought through every possible way I could see you again, and they all ended with your family having me banished from the Seireitei."

"You weren't wrong," she shrugged. "About the banishment part, or the...other part." She pushed her temperature a little lower. "Except that it started before I was adopted."

"Huh?"

"I hated the Academy," she said softly. "I was miserable."

"It was better than Inuzuri," he offered, dread building in the pit of his stomach. He did not want to hear this.

"It wasn't. I was good at things in Inuzuri. I knew everyone, even though they were awful, I knew how things worked, even though everything was messed up. I was… good at things in Inuzuri. I was good at every shitty thing to do in Inuzuri. _We _were good at every shitty thing to do in Inuzuri."

"We could have ruled that shitty town."

"We could have. But we went to Shin'ou instead." Another temperature adjustment. "My zanjutsu teacher was mean to me because I was worse at zanjutsu than all the rich kids and my kidou teacher was mean to me because I was better at kido than all the rich kids. I didn't make a single friend. I couldn't read and write fast enough to keep up." She paused. "And you were so good at it."

"Whaaaaat?" Renji made an awful face.

"You made friends and they put you in the advanced class and every five minutes you were passing some new test. You didn't need me anymore."

Renji's cheeks colored. "Rukia, you know I was an asshole as a kid. It was all bluster, I wasn't doing well at all-"

"I was so proud of you."

Renji swallowed thickly.

"I was jealous of you, but I didn't want to hold you back. You were becoming something you couldn't have been back in Rukongai. How could I tell you I wished we had never left?" She paused for a beat. "And yet, when the Kuchikis showed up, I was _terrified. _I didn't want to go."

Renji was silent.

"But Shin'ou was also terrible. I didn't know what to do. And when I saw you, I thought…maybe he does still need me. If Renji asks me to stay, if Renji still cares about me, I will stay."

"Rukia."

"How were you to know? I never told you any of this. And what a stupid thing to do, to put it on you."

"I did care!" He was angry now. "I cared so much."

"I know that now. I didn't, then. I knew I was alone and I was a terrible shinigami and my heart hurt so much from loving you and losing you and… and I just froze myself. Literally, not metaphorically. Maybe also metaphorically. I had been there a week or two. I had decided I needed to get rid of all my old emotions and try to be a good, emotionless Kuchiki, like Brother, and the next thing I knew, I was covered in hot towels and fussing servants. Brother was there, too. 'It appears her zanpakutou is an ice and snow type,' he said, and then left again."

"What?" Renji managed, his voice barely audible.

"I suppose our problem," she mused, "Is that we were hurt so badly then, that we've always been afraid to get so close again. It wasn't our fault, there wasn't anything we really could have done differently. It would almost be nice if we could just get mad at each other and have it out, but it was just something that happened. It's not that I don't trust you, it's that I don't trust myself."

"Rukia, I think you've chilled yourself past any reasonable emotional range."

"Have I?" Rukia felt fine. Things were becoming clearer and it was easier to talk about ancient pains that had once seems impossible to put into words.

Renji squeezed his eyes shut. "It's too cold in here, I can't think." He grimaced. "BANKAI!"

His increased reiatsu buffered a little more of Rukia's cold, but his brain didn't seem to be working much better. Hihiou Zabimaru curled in huge loops, encircling both of them, trying to fit in the small room. "The actual problem," he bit off slowly. "Is that we pretend like we know everything about each other so that we never have to talk about anything difficult or painful. In fact, I have _no clue whatsoever _how you feel about me. Did you _even notice _that you said you loved me in the middle of that story?"

"How am I supposed to tell you anything?" she replied icily. "You never let me in anymore. When were kids, I saw you hungry and smelly and bullied and covered in ants, and now, you only want me to see you as some tough vice-captain who's cool all the time and never needs me for anything. I once found out you were sick from_ my brother_, a man who wouldn't comment if his own hair was on fire."

"Just tell me then! I don't care if it's bad, I just want to hear you say it. 'I loved you when we were kids, and I got over it.' Go on."

Rukia stopped and blinked. "I loved you when we were kids and I got over it?" she echoed weakly.

Renji nodded brusquely. "Thank you." Between the cold and all reiatsu in the room, he felt numb and deaf.

"That's what you think? That's… somewhat true, I guess." She squared her shoulders. "Sure. I 'got over' you. It… took a long time. And I was never sure it had really worked, so I avoided you." She made an awful face. "I was lying in Ichigo's closet one night and he was yelling at me through the door about his stupid human teen problems, and I thought to myself… 'At last… at last, I am not longer the least bit interested in adolescent dirtbags. I am free.'"

Renji smirked, despite the fact that his heart felt like a lump of cold, heavy lead.

"But you, Abarai Renji, did not have the grace or decency to stay an adolescent dirtbag."

He wasn't sure how to respond to that. "I arrested you and threw you in jail," he pointed out glumly.

"Ah, but you never could have done that when we were kids. Not in a million years. You would have shot your mouth off and gotten us both thrown in jail." She smiled at him fondly. "You had become a _vice-captain_. You weren't a delinquent anymore. You weren't self-destructing any more." Her smile turned sad. "I wanted to be mad at you, and I couldn't, I was so proud of you, again. I made fun of your eyebrows so you wouldn't worry about me too much."

"My eyebrows are very cool-"

"Stop interrupting. I will never, never stop making fun of your eyebrows." A look came over her face that he recalled seeing many times in those dark days when she sat in his brig. "But I thought, I can die, and Renji will live on and live well with his stupid eyebrows. And then! And then!"

"You're getting emotional again."

Rukia took a deep breath and the temperature shuttered downward. "_Of course,_ Ichigo came to rescue me and _of course _his beautiful idiot friends came with him. That's what teenage dirtbags do. What do they have to lose? What do they know of Soul Society? But you- you knew what you were going against! You had _everything _to lose!" She shook her head distractedly. "And after it was all over, you wanted to be friends again! With me! You, Vice-Captain, with a million friends, and bankai, and muscles for days! Me! An unseated officer! Without any powers, even!" She huffed, and crossed her arms across her chest. "'Got over you', indeed. I think it took me an entire three weeks before I had fallen in love with you again."

There was a long pause while Renji tried to remember how his tongue worked. "You… did?"

Rukia made a frustrated chuffing noise. "I loved you when we were kids and I got over it. And then we grew up and I fell in madly love with you again. Happy, now?"

From what felt like deep underwater, Renji replied, "Yes?" His face split into a relieved grin. "Yes, very!"

Rukia broke eye contact briefly. "Oh. Ok. Good."

He wanted to drop his sword and grab hold of her, but he knew he would probably actually die if he did that. Instead, words flooded from his mouth. "I loved you when we were kids and I have never stopped, not for a single minute. You are my favorite person in four worlds and you are the most beautiful woman I have even seen. I am pretty sure I haven't managed to keep this a secret from anyone I have ever met, how is it even possible that you didn't know this?"

Oh, Rukia thought. Oh, I wish I could feel this. "So… when Aizen was trying to kill us and you yelled, 'I'll never let her go' in front of everyone? Including Aizen? That wasn't just… over-enthusiasm, was it?"

"It was not." Various puzzle pieces were clicking together in Renji's head. "You told Sado, didn't you? Around the time we were in the Advance Squad?"

"I didn't have to! He's very empathetic! It's impossible to keep anything from him!"

"Damn that guy."

"Hey, uh, you remember that extremely awkward dinner party Momo threw?"

"Yes...oh. OH." Pause. Do _you _remember that party Kuchiki-taichou threw when you were made Vice-Captain? Did you even notice when I saw you in that dress and couldn't talk for a full minute?"

"_You _were wearing your dress uniform, so no, I most certainly was not paying any attention to anything you may or may not have said."

There was a long silence. They were both thinking it. Finally, Renji said it.

"What about all the times we made out when we were drunk?"

"It wasn't that many times."

Renji made a quick count on his fingers. "It was five times."

"It was six times, and that's honestly a very reasonable number of times."

"Are you counting the time right after we got back from Hueco Mundo when I was on all those painkillers from having my organs grown back, and you kissed me to thank me for going to Hueco Mundo with you? Because one kiss doesn't count as making out."

"You cheater! I didn't think you remembered that! You passed out halfway through!"

"I earned that kiss, and it was a good one, worth remembering. "

They took a moment to remember it.

"Renji… are we… idiots?"

"I think so, yes."

"I was scared," she said finally. "I will probably barf from terror once I thaw myself out. It may not seem like it, but I do love very deeply. I've lost people I love before, and I never even told them. The idea of… openly… loving someone is… a lot." She jerked her chin at him. "What's your excuse? Why didn't you just say something?"

There was nothing left for it, but honesty. "Because I've never been good enough for you, and I'm not sure I ever will be." The admission felt like a sword being pulled from a wound, a sensation with which Renji was depressingly familiar.

Rukia blinked. "Goodness, Renji, if you're not good enough for me, who is? Would you doom me to a life alone with only your high standards for company?"

"Your brother, maybe," he mumbled. "Not that you would date your own brother, just as… a standard."

"My brother!" she looked mildly horrified. "Is that why you've been trying to beat him all these years?" She shook her head. "I hope to someday figure out what my sister saw in him, but in the meantime, I think my own tastes run a little differently." She frowned thoughtfully. "This is it. This is why Zabimaru won't let you have bankai."

"You think?" he asked, skeptical.

"Your problem," she informed him, "is the company you keep. You've been keeping pace with Captains and Arrancar and Visoreds, and instead of realizing how strong that makes you, you find yourself wanting in comparison! I know you compare yourself to Ichigo, which is ridiculous, because Ichigo is ridiculous. And in addition to being very, very strong, you are fair and honorable and brave." She frowned thoughtfully. "I know I can't convince you of any of this, but I can _prove _it."The temperature, which Renji had assumed was already near her limit, abruptly plunged.

"What are you doing?" he managed through chattering teeth.

"Am I stronger than you, Abarai?" she asked, her eyes glinting and her mouth curved into the sneer of a Rukongai street challenge. The floor splintered beneath Rukia's feet, and the windows were cracking.

"No," he replied in turn, gripping his sword and opening the floodgates of his own reiatsu. The boards beneath his own feet shattered.

Elsewhere, Ichibe spilled some tea.

Rukia felt ice beginning to form on her eyeballs. She was nearing the bottom. "I think my body is actually dead now. It's just a big lump of reishi that I'm moving around like a frozen meat puppet."

Renji was still feeling the street brat. "That's gross, Rukia. You're gross." His heart swelled with love for her.

She had begun to glow. "Renji. Would you like to see my bankai?"

"I guess. It better not be gross."

"It's going to be beautiful and it's going to be big. But I know you can take it, and we're going to absolutely trash those assholes when we get back to Soul Society, so I want to practice releasing it in front of you."

"Yeah, look, you're no slouch yourself, so give me a second to get ready." He cracked his shoulders. "SOO ZABIMARU!"

Rukia blinked. "Wow." She scrunched her eyebrows together. "HAKKA NO TOGAME!"

* * *

Shutara Senjumaru picked her way carefully through the rubble of the former Ichibe's former dojo. "What the hell happened here?"

Ichibe was draping a blanket over Rukia's shoulders. She was asleep, leaning on her sword. Snores emerged from a second blanket nearby. "They figured out their bankais. And fell asleep. You know how it is."

"Oh, good. That was fast."

"Mmm."

Shutara glanced over both the sleeping shinigami. "You confirm Oetsu's suspicions about them?"

"No, but I didn't rule it out either." He scratched his beard. "I honestly don't know what they are. Nothing I've ever seen. They are soul-bonded, though, I'm pretty sure of that."

"Hm, too bad. He was pretty good looking out of his pants."

"Oh, dial it back, for once. Isn't Kuchiki on his way up to you?"

"Mmm, yes, he is. I should get back. I just came by to drop off their outfits," she said, handing over the two bundles in her arms. "They can leave in the morning, I suppose. I'm sure they aren't interested in hanging around here any longer than they have to. Did you see their bankais? You think they're strong enough?"

"I think they'll be okay."

* * *

Rukia peered down over the edge of the drop-off. "For the record… I'm sorry I fell asleep."

"It's okay. I did too."

"Renji, if this doesn't- I mean, if we don't-"

Renji leaned close to her. "Rukia. We are going to go down there and save our friends and rescue Soul Society. You and I are the best, and we're going to go rule that shitty town."

"I was only going to say that I'm sorry I didn't kiss you when I had the chance. But if you're so confident-"

"You are correct, we will have plenty of chances later. But I'll kiss you right now, if you want."

She glanced over her shoulder. "Ichibe's standing right there."

"I don't care. Oi! Ichibe! I love this lady and I'm gonna kiss her before we jump off this thing!"

"Good for you!"

"See?"

"Is this…" Rukia gestured at him, "how you are now?"

"I will be very serious when we are fighting people, but otherwise, yes. This is how I am now." Gently, he cupped her cheek with one rough hand and leaned so close that their lips nearly, but not quite, touched. "I can't believe I'm kissing you," he breathed, "while you're wearing a hat with earflaps."

"This hat is so much less stupid than your eyebrows," she sighed, and leaned the last centimeter forward.

It wasn't a long kiss. It wasn't a desperate kiss. It was just a kiss between two people, deeply in love with each other, who also happened to be extremely powerful soul reapers. It was a good kiss. Ichibe averted his eyes politely, but he did note that their reiatsu now resonated with a satisfying spiritual _TWANG _that would no double leave junior shinigami passed out for miles whenever these two leapt into battle.

Renji chucked Rukia under the chin. "After we win this thing, I'm gonna kiss you again, just like that, right in front of your brother."

"Could you… not? You can definitely kiss me again, but we might want to slow-roll the brother part."

"Oh, yeah, he's gonna require some paperwork, isn't he?"

"Yes."

"Then, after I have submitted my application in triplicate and received the appropriate signatures, I am going to kiss you again, just like that, right in front of your brother."

"Deal."

Renji settled his goggles over his eyes. "Hey old man, thanks for the training! We'll see you in a few years, next time you need a few more members of Squad Zero!"

"It could happen," Ichibe admitted.

"Enough of your nonsense," Rukia smiled slyly at her best friend, the man she loved. "Let's go be shinigami."

"Yeah. Let's go be shinigami."


End file.
